


A sack of little chasms

by j quadrifrons (Jenavira)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Asexual Character, Consensual But Not Safe Or Sane, Consent Issues, Dissociation, Do Not Archive (The Magnus Archives), Loneliness, M/M, Peter Lukas is a creep, fetishization of asexuality, ill-advised sex, it took 2k to describe this dynamic tagging it is hard, just every trigger warning for sex you decided to have but didn't really want, sex for the sake of human connection (but there are no humans here), unpleasant asexual sexual experiences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 04:13:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18652678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenavira/pseuds/j%20quadrifrons
Summary: Late at night, Jon wanders out of the Archives and finds he is not entirely alone in the Institute.Title from Albert Goldbarth, "The Gulf"





	A sack of little chasms

It was late when Jon emerged from his office, late enough that the light spilling through his door was the only illumination in the Archives. Basira and Daisy would have gone to bed hours ago. Daisy was doing better, but her endurance was still so low that she slept twelve hours a day, on top of Basira as often as she got the chance. Jon wasn't sure where Melanie slept, though he had his suspicions, which he didn't care to follow up on.

His eyes slid over the assistants' desks, unseeing with the ease of long practice. Melanie's was the same chaos it had always been, and Basira had never been interested in taking one over for herself. The files stacked neatly and without meaning on Tim's desk had been there since months before the Unknowing; he hadn't really worked in the last half a year before - before. Martin's desk had a friendly untidiness that was downright inviting, files clearly leafed through, a tea mug tucked safely beside the computer monitor, some little plastic figurines of characters Jon didn't recognize and had never thought to ask about. The twinge in his chest was too familiar to acknowledge, but suddenly the Archives were much too empty. He'd hoped to speak to Daisy, to someone, before settling down on the cot behind his desk for the night, and despite his eternal exhaustion and the late hour he was suddenly very awake.

Without any real intention, his feet carried him up the stairs and into the Institute proper. For all his long hours spent in the Archives, it had been years since he ventured into the main corridors of the Magnus Institute after dark. Although they did technically keep to a regular business schedule, the place has always run on an academic's priorities, which meant it wasn't uncommon for researchers to be holed up in the library at all hours. So he really shouldn't have been so surprised to stumble upon the man in the canteen, sat at a table with his legs stretched out and his hands wrapped around a steaming mug of tea, despite the fact that it was nearing midnight.

"Working late?" the man said with a friendly smile. He was very pale - not that Jon was in any position to judge, when was the last time he had seen the sun? - with ice-blue eyes that seemed to laugh at a secret joke. He was, Jon noted absently, very good-looking. He was also the first person outside of the Archives staff who had voluntarily spoken to him in months.

"Er. Something like that," Jon answered awkwardly. Did the man not know who he was? It seemed impossible; surely the scars alone were enough to match a description, and Jon knew how the Institute staff talked about him.

But the man just gestured toward the chair across from him, and Jon sat down. "Peter," the man said, though he didn't offer a hand to shake. Jon had a momentary twinge -- but surely not, this man was nothing like the taciturn sea captain described in the statements, and the Eye offered no suggestion of hidden knowledge. Not that that was reliable - he hadn't known about Daisy, for one - but he was also so very tired of paranoia. It was a very common name. Perfectly normal people worked at the Magnus Institute. He used to know some of them, he thought.

"Jon," he said, expecting a shock of recognition and a question about the odd goings-on of the Archives, but Peter only nodded with affable neutrality and shifted in his seat so he was leaning across the table in Jon's direction.

Peter smiled lazily, conspiratorially. "I've always liked places like this at night. They feel so empty, as though without people moving through it the building itself has lost something. It's peaceful. Not that the Institute is ever chaotic," he said with a smirk.

"You weren't here for the worm attack, then," Jon scoffed. At some point Peter had reached out and laid his fingers, hot from the mug of tea he had been holding, on Jon's wrist. It was...nice, honestly. When was the last time someone had touched him without meaning him harm?

"Before my time," Peter agreed easily, as though they were discussing something that might happen in any office. What kind of chaos did other people's workplaces see, Jon wondered, watching as Peter stroked his wrist with delicate touches. A particularly contentious firing? Drunken holiday parties? The exhaustion was getting to him again, he supposed, long sleepless nights and too many statements. He was beginning to feel unreal, and the unfamiliarity of casual conversation with a stranger was not doing anything to ground him.

"Still," he said, struggling to keep up his end of the interaction, looking back up to meet Peter's cold eyes, "there always seems to be someone around, doesn't there?"

Peter's smile was full of even white teeth. "Lucky us," he said. His fingers stopped their stroking, and Jon looked down at them. Peter closed his hand loosely around Jon's wrist. "This is probably too forward," he said, not an inch apologetic, "but I could use a good fuck. If you're amenable."

Jon blinked, shocked. More shocked, in fact, that he didn't make his apologies and flee immediately. But Peter's hand around his wrist felt good. Grounding. And it had been so long since someone had smiled to see him, or talked to him like a normal person. The days in which a normal person looked at Jonathan Sims with anything other than fear were numbered, he was certain, and that number was not large. (He thought of Basira and Daisy, piled on the too-small cot together in Document Storage. The same cot he'd offered to Martin, years ago.) But Peter wasn't afraid of him. Wasn't trying to kill him. Was reaching out, one person to another, with an honesty Jon had never been able to manage in any context, sexual or otherwise. (And besides, there was the Eye, ever-open in the back of his mind, clamoring for _new, new, new experience, new thing, what will happen, let me know, let me_ see--)

"All right," Jon said, and Peter let go of his wrist, shoving his chair back. Its scrape across the floor echoed in the empty room around them. He came around the table and pulled Jon to his feet with a fist in the front of his shirt, kissing him deliberately as he began to manhandle him across the room.

It was almost enough to get swept up in, for a moment, and Jon let his attention narrow to Peter's mouth on his, hard and demanding, his tongue slipping between Jon's teeth, the only point of contact between them aside from Peter's hand in Jon's shirt. Jon's back hit something solid which opened behind him as Peter reached around to open the door, and the unsettling motion of it pulled Jon away, gasping. They were in the storage cupboard, a narrow thing with barely enough room for two grown men between the rows of industrial shelving. Peter kicked the door behind him, but it didn't quite close all the way, leaving a streak of light to catch in Peter's straw-colored hair.

Jon would have leaned back in for another of those harsh kisses, but Peter's hand on his shoulder pushed him unrelentingly down to his knees while with his other he unfastened his trousers. Jon swallowed a flash of disappointment. He genuinely liked kissing, something he tended to forget about, but he had just agreed to have sex with a coworker in a storage cupboard, so what did he really expect?

Peter's cock was already half-hard when he got it out, thickening in his palm as he stroked it slowly. Jon licked lips that had suddenly gone dry. He remembered this being satisfying, at least, when he had tried it before: making his partner come apart with mouth and tongue and hands. Another stroke, and Peter held his cock steady inches from Jon's face. Without looking up at him, without thinking about it any more, Jon leaned forward and took the head into his mouth.

The taste was salty, heavy, oddly familiar. Already he felt the stretch in his jaw. Careful of teeth, Jon slipped his tongue over hot, silky flesh and sucked carefully. The only thing he got in response was half a sigh, so faint it might not have been there. Something about it kicked the part of him that hated to be less than excellent at anything, and he surged forward, taking too much too soon, until Peter's cock hit the back of his throat and he gagged, tears pricking at his eyes. Jon swallowed stubbornly, but his body fought him until he had to pull off.

He looked up, seeking Peter's eyes, but Peter had his head thrown back, his hands clutching the metal shelf behind him, and all Jon could see was the long, pale line of his throat. Fine, he thought, a little irritated, and swallowed him down again. It wasn't particularly pleasant, choking on Peter's cock, the taste of semen on the back of his tongue, but it was a _lot_ , which was almost what he needed, and he was determined to wring a reaction, any reaction, from the other man.

It came, minutes later, in the form of Peter's hand in his hair, pulling Jon roughly off his cock with an obscene pop, raising him and shoving him face-first onto the shelving unit. Dizzy, Jon struggled to catch his breath while Peter jerked at his trousers. It was too much, abruptly, too clearly nothing that he'd wanted, but Jon was too tired to object, to apologize, to stammer through an explanation. _What did you expect?_ he thought again, leaning his forehead into his folded arms, waiting.

Peter's breath was hot on the back of his neck, his fingers cold and slick where they prodded at his hole. (Jon did not want to think about what in this storage closet he might have found to use for lube, decided to assume that a man who's going to proposition his coworkers for sex at midnight is the kind of man who keeps lube in his pockets, and the Eye and its curiosity could fuck entirely off.) He didn't spend quite long enough, but Jon had grown very used to pain, and anyway, it wasn't bad. It wasn't good, not enough to pull him out of his head and into his body where maybe he could feel something other than this creeping dread, but then again, it hardly ever was. (A flash of memory, Georgie's smile, which he put carefully away again.) He listened to Peter's breathing, infuriatingly steady, as though he were doing nothing more strenuous than climbing a flight of stairs.

In the back of his mind, impossible to ignore since he woke from thecoma, the Eye devoured details indiscriminately: the metal shelf he was leaned against, stacked with plastic-wrapped packages of paper napkins and disposable utensils, which rattled slightly in a steady rhythm. The steady beat of Peter's breathing, and his own, harsh in his own ears. The faint smell of bleach. The burn in the back of his throat. Peter's hands on his hips. Peter's cock dragging rough and just this side of overwhelming inside of him. If he could only focus, he thought he might be able to pull this back to something he wouldn't hate himself for, but he couldn't. The Eye wanted it all. Jon took a deep, steadying breath that only caught a little in his throat.

**

The satisfaction when Peter came inside the Archivist was as much from the knowledge of Elias's fury as pure physical pleasure. Even when the old bastard had asked him to ensure his protege's complete isolation from the assistants he'd grown far too attached to, this was a treat Peter had never anticipated. He could only hope Elias had gotten a proper eyeful; it was more than likely, of course, but he couldn't be sure. The mental image of Elias hard and frustrated and indignant in his prison cell was almost as good as the waves of regret, self-recrimination, and bitter isolation pouring off the Archivist.

Peter sighed as he pulled out, grabbed a napkin off the shelf - convenient, really, fucking in kitchen storage - to clean himself up with, and knocked the door back open with his foot while fastening himself back up. He ought to stop back by his office, he decided, and remind his assistant to go home.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Jon, who by Word-of-God is ace-spec but doesn't use the word to describe himself (and also canonically is very bad at his own boundaries), has almost certainly had ill-advised and unsatisfying "this is how humans make connections when they can't words, right?" sex before, but why write realistic shitty relationship bad sex when you have a convenient monster to hand? 
> 
> Also, I've been writing fanfiction for twenty goddamn years, and this is the first explicit sex I finish and post? *throws hands in the air*
> 
> (Please come yell about TMA with me, I have too many feelings  
> [@j_quadrifrons](https://twitter.com/j_quadrifrons), [backofthebookshelf](https://backofthebookshelf.tumblr.com))


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